Cultural Dessert

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

14 December 2011

Another vital component for bringing on the festive mood is
the annual Christmas Cracker concert by the Northampton Symphony Orchestra. On
Sunday we were back at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton for an afternoon of
carols and other Christmas music. I haven’t seen the 2004 animated film ‘The
Polar Express’ but the music by Alan Silvestri (who also wrote the score for ‘Back
to the Future’) is a brilliantly nostalgic evocation of Christmas. Somehow I
have also missed seeing that perennial favourite ‘The Snowman’ so it was fun to
discover the story for the first time by playing Howard Blake’s music with
narration by our excellent compere Graham Padden and members of the Northamptonshire
County Boys’ Choir singing ‘Walking in the Air’. We finished the concert with
Tchaikovsky’s ‘Suite from the Ballet Nutcracker’ (including a stunning
performance at the beginning of ‘The Waltz of the Flowers’ by harpist Federica
Mossone) and, with the scent of mulled wine and mince pies heavy in the air, you
could hardly get more Christmassy.

'Cinderella' by Sue Sachon

14 December 2011

Christmas is coming and there is no better way to start the
festive period than with a visit to Toddington to see the excellent TADS
pantomime. On Saturday were back at the tiny TADS theatre to see ‘Cinderella’ –
a new version written by TADS member Sue Sachon. This was a very traditional pantomime,
wonderfully delivered. Perhaps a little less inventive than last years’ ‘The
Pirate Princess’ (reviewed here in December 2010) but great fun. ‘Cinderella’
featured a cast of fifteen actors, all of whom were strong. I think the
highlight was Lea Pryer and Janet Bray as the comic crooks ‘Bob Down’ and ‘Sid
Out’: their rendition of ‘Money Makes the World Go Round’ was a showstopper.
But they only narrowly beat the performance of “U.G.L.Y. You ain't got no alibi,
you're ugly!” by Cinderella’s Ugly Sisters and Stepmother. Very few of the cast
were not playing the opposite gender, but amongst the usual comic drag
performances, James Sygrove – as the wicked Stepmother, Cleptomania – took the
whole thing to a different level (and not just because of the height of his
heels!) with an impressive and disturbing portrayal that suggested he might
have pursued a successful career as a female impersonator.

Friday, December 09, 2011

'Henry V' by William Shakespeare

9 December 2011

On Saturday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see the Propeller
production of Henry V. Propeller is an all-male Shakespeare company, led by
Edward Hall. This was a very muscular account of this most masculine of
Shakespeare’s plays which did its best to bring home the realities of war in a contemporary
context. With members of the cast, in army fatigues and balaclavas, patrolling
the auditorium before the start of the play, we felt very much part of the
theatre of war. This was very deliberately an ensemble piece with no real stars
but high quality acting throughout the cast. In this production The Chorus
truly was a chorus, with its words passed between all the actors in turn. For
me, the downside of this emphasis on the ensemble was that the King was not the
strongest of the actors on the stage and was sometimes a little difficult to
hear – particularly in the big set piece speeches where his admirable striving
for realism rather than Olivier-style acting left his fast speaking
occasionally drowned by music or sound effects. The music was impressive, with
some fine singing by the cast and good use of (relatively recent) rock and pop
to stress the contemporary setting. We were also treated to more songs in the
foyer during the interval where some of the actors performed to raise funds for
a respite care charity: they have collected more than £5,000 so far on their
tour, which only started in November. I really enjoyed the show: Propeller made
it an engaging and entertaining tale which kept my attention throughout. Henry V
is not Shakespeare’s best plot (it’s mostly one battle after another with a few
short pauses in between) but I was reminded of its crucial significance as a pivot
between the other history plays. So many of the nuances are much more poignant
if you are familiar with the two Henry IV plays. On the night before Agincourt,
Henry V worries that he may be doomed to atone for his father’s sin in deposing
Richard II. And this play finishes with The Chorus foretelling the failures of
Henry VI and the onset of the Wars of the Roses.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

'The Killing (Forbrydelsen)' by Søren Sveistrup

1 December 2011

She's back! How wonderful to be back in Copenhagen with Sarah Lund for the second series of the Danish TV series 'The Killing' (Forbrydelsen). If you missed the amazing first series and are still wondering what all the fuss was about I would recommend leaping straight into 'The Killing II'. The new series is a completely separate story with an almost entirely new cast of characters and you really don't have to have watched the original to enjoy it. 'The Killing' is a police procedural thriller serial set in Copenhagen. What makes it special is the quality of the plot (written by Søren Sveistrup), the acting and the length of the story. The first series consisted of 20 hour-long episodes, each representing one day in the investigation of a single crime. The luxury of having 20 hours to explore the characters of the various suspects and their investigators allowed a depth you rarely see in TV detective dramas. (If 20 episodes seems a bit daunting, the second series is only 10 hours long!) And don't be put off by the fact that 'The Killing' is in Danish with English subtitles: like all the best foreign dramas it's so good that, afterwards, you will struggle to remember that it was subtitled. Although 'The Killing' shows us events from the viewpoints of all the main protagonists, it is always careful never to reveal anything to the viewer that the police don't know - so you have the same opportunity to work out what happened as those investigating. To make the plot last for so many episodes there are, inevitably, a series of red herrings. But each innocent suspect, for whom there appears to be compelling evidence of guilt, turns out to have an extremely plausible explanation for their suspicious behaviour. This is a very sobering lesson in how easy it is to convince yourself that someone must be the murderer on purely circumstantial evidence. Both series feature a strong political subplot and the power games between the politicians, the media and the police form a fascinating backdrop. But the heart of 'The Killing' is police officer Sarah Lund played by Sofie Gråbøl as a very believable human being. Lund's very gradual descent into instability, driven by her obsession with solving the murder of Nana Birk Larsen was so carefully portrayed that the disastrous consequences of her actions took us as much by surprise as they did her. Sarah Lund is a very cleverly drawn character: her colleagues (and us viewers) feel she is able to spot things that the other police miss - she seems to have an extra level of intuition. But she is a real, believable character, not an infallible Sherlock Holmes: she doesn't have special powers and her hunches often prove to be misguided. This creates a peculiar fascination in the viewer: you are rooting for Sarah and urging her colleagues to listen to her while simultaneously worrying that she might be going down completely the wrong path. It's brilliantly done. 'The Killing II' is on BBC4 on Saturday evenings but don't worry if you've missed the first few episodes: the whole series will also be available on BBC iPlayer until 24 December. (And I haven't even mentioned the jumpers!)

About Me

Since September 2005 Robin Simpson has been Chief Executive of Voluntary Arts, which provides a universal voice for approximately 63,000 voluntary arts groups, across the UK and Ireland, involving more than 10 million participants in creative cultural activities. A keen amateur French horn player, Robin is currently a member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra. Robin is a perennial ballroom dancing student, a frequent theatre-goer, an enthusiastic reader of contemporary fiction, an insatiable consumer of classical and world music and a keen blogger at www.culturalplayingfield.org and www.culturaldessert.blogspot.com